Leo Gray and the lunar eclipse

Excellent choice for elementary and middle school libraries promoting STEM. Characters from a wide range of cultural backgrounds and special abilities will give all of your students a chance to be seen. A solid mystery focused on bravery, courage and friendship. This fun futuristic world will keep your students' curiosity piqued.  

Leo Gray and the Lunar Eclipse is a wittily composed and delightfully illustrated middle-grade sci-fi/adventure novel by debut author and illustrator K.J. Kruk. This book is best recommended for readers in 3rd to 6th grade (and may also appeal to older fans of MG/YA crossovers of fantasy/fiction).

The book follows an eleven-year-old protagonist, Leo Gray, who lives in the future, in a suburb of New York City with parents that insist on living as though it were the end of the 20th century. Feeling outcasted by this, Leo enters a rocket-building competition in an attempt to gain admission to the new school inside the moon. Unfortunately, his plans are to put to a stop by his father, and Leo is forced to spend the summer patrolling trees with his hilarious and weird neighbor, Mr. Dawgspat.

During Leo's time on tree patrol, he learns from Mr. Dawgspat that the real reason why the trees have been disappearing in their neighborhood has been because of "aliens." At first, Leo dismisses the idea, but when he reaches Space Camp after receiving a surprise ticket, he runs across a note written in a strange text that jump-starts a series of events that escalate into an even bigger unsolved mystery about the moon's Luna City. 

Kruk has impressively created a highly relatable cast of characters from the U.S., Canada, Brazil, France, Australia, Japan, etc, in addition to featuring characters with disabilities, highlighting their said-handicap not as a crutch, but as fun and empowering character features.

There are playful visual elements throughout, in addition to a strip of code for the more clever readers to decipher. The book comes to close with a surprise twist-ending that will leave readers reading the book all over in an attempt to string together Kruk's trail of clues as to who the ultimate nemesis is.

With humor, superhero action, a relatable cast and a touch of heart, we anticipate that Leo Gray and the Lunar Eclipse will have a high demand rate at any children's library or bookstore with proper circulation after its launch.

Our full five stars!

This was a fast fun read! The author's writing style is really different. Instead of greeting us with a typical dystopian setting, we meet the main character in a present day setting within a futuristic setting, ex: Leo's family still watch tv and use a dishwasher even though robots now do everything and tvs no longer exist. This adds to the books humor, but there is also some mystery and conflict here as to why that is, which I suspect the author is holding back from us for a later installment. 

There are a number of minor stories in this book as well, ex: trees are disappearing all over town and Leo’s neighbor (who’s the landscaping security guy) claims to have worked for the government and that his wife was abducted by aliens called Lunalings. This is another example of where the author leaves us to wonder about what’s really going on, as we only get the answer to where the trees went and why they disappeared. We don’t find out more about the alien abducted wife, which I was really curious about. 

The main story takes off when Leo leaves his sheltered home on Earth to attend the moon’s academy after winning a national science competition. At the academy Leo meets other kids who were awarded acceptance for various talents like math, history, theater, and music, though some did gain entrance from their rich parents. 

Low and behold, the selection of Earth’s most gifted comes with a Doom’s Day message for Earth: Melkorg invasion! An evil alien race that consumes time and erases life on planets are on track to attack ours. And Leo and his friends are now on a mission to stop them before their portal opens on the night of the lunar eclipse. Only a second internal plan to destroy the moon is soon revealed, and Leo ends up in a hospital bed with no way to better assist when he runs into it.

In the end, we find out that eclipse hasn’t yet happened and that there is something more going on behind the office doors of the lunar president. Leo ultimately leaves the reader with an even bigger question in the end that shouts out: sequel!

I'm really looking forward to seeing where this series will go!

I had this book recommended from a friend who is part of an early review program. My oldest daughter who's just finishing fifth grade this year really liked it. I was surprised when she requested her own "Quiet Time" to read it! I found it enjoyable to read as an adult too. Closest book I can think of is book 1 of the Harry Potter series, but Leo Gray is more upbeat, modern/scifiy and doesn't have such a dark theme to it. The book itself is well made, purple with yellow inside pages and has a fun CD-like logo.